Evacuation Day used to be celebrated each year as a holiday, but over time gradually got replaced by Thanksgiving. 2/

As with many things American, its actual story is at once both colorful and complex. The colorful parts are fairly well known - for example, how Washington’s entry into the city was delayed by a British flag that continued to fly at the tip of lower Manhattan. 3/

The departing British had nailed the Union Jack to the flag pole and then greased the pole. A young sergeant John Van Arsdale finally managed to climbed the pole and yanked down the flag to the cheers of the crowd. 4/

And then there are the “13 toasts” given at the celebratory dinner that Washington and his officers celebrated at Fraunces Tavern in lower Manhattan (like St Paul’s Chapel in the first tweet also still there!) 5/

Some of the toasts are antiquated sounding today. But others, like #11, still resonate. 6/

But now the complexities of the story - the biggest of which was what would happen to slaves who had fled to British lines during the war and in some cases had served with British forces. 7/

Sir Guy Carleton, the British commander in NYC, said that he intended to evacuate the former slaves along with other loyalists when British forces departed. 8/

Washington objected, claiming that evacuating escaped slaves would violate provisions of the Treaty of Paris that provided, “carrying away any Negroes or other property of American inhabitants.” 9/

In the end, Carleton had his way - though promising that if it turned out that the evacuation of escaped slaves was improper, the British would pay compensation. 10/

Remarkably, details about the escaped slaves evacuated by the British were recorded in the ‘Book of Negroes,’ which also survives. Among the people in it is one Harry Washington, a slave of, you guessed it, George Washington. google.com/amp/s/www.nbcn… 11/

So, in short, in one story, the same people are both heroes and villains - ah, America! 12/

A few more thoughts on the North Carolina partisan gerrymandering cases - or more specifically the facts. #fairmaps#ncpol 2/

Although some are skeptical about what the Supreme Court will do in the partisan gerrymandering cases it took today (and not without justification, especially given Justice Kennedy’s retirement), it’s important to remember how unusual the facts of NC are. #fairmaps#ncpol 3/

2018 was a busy and, in many ways, head spinning year on the redistricting front - with action in both state and federal court and at the ballot box. A look back. #fairmaps 1/

Things kicked off on January 5, when the special master in the racial gerrymandering challenge to North Carolina's legislative maps issued his recommendations on how the maps should be redrawn. brennancenter.org/sites/default/…#fairmaps 2/

Then, on Jan 9, while the court in the NC racial gerrymandering case was weighing recommendations for fixes to the legislative maps, a different federal court issued a ruling striking down NC's congressional map as a partisan gerrymander. brennancenter.org/sites/default/…#fairmaps 3/

Related threads

Day 23 of El Chapo's trial just getting underway. Stay tuned for updates from the courtroom via @miguelfdzflores. Expecting another full day of testimony from Vicente Zambada.

Mid-morning break at the Chapo trial. Per @miguelfdzflores, today's testimony from Vicentillo has focused on the Sinaloa cartel's weaponry and murders. Some colorful anecdotes, including one involving a bazooka.

Vicente Zambada testified that 99 percent of the Sinaloa cartel's weapons come from the United States. He said they bring "millions" of bullets a month across the border. Semi-automatic AK-47s purchased in the US would be turned into machine guns by a guy named Pepe el Armero.

[...] "All were faced with an unpleasant situation: Plautius in conducting the war against his in-laws, Caractacus against his sister and brother-in-law, and Arviragus opposing his father-in-law, the Emperor Claudius.

"What Claudius and the Roman Senate had underestimated was the unbending temper of the #Britons. He was quickly to learn that it was an impossibility for the #British to make any compromise where their religion was concerned.

"His faith was his most precious treasure for which, as he has long proved, he would willingly die but never relinquish. His religion had taught him that his earthly life was but a stepping-stone to the eventual goal of immortality.

Today's terrorist attack in Pittsburgh is truly horrifying. My thoughts go out to the families of the victims. It's not enough to just send condolences, we have to look at the larger trend and acknowledge the biggest terror threat in America:

Hate groups and the extreme right

Experts disagree on the exact % of terror attacks that are motivated by far-right ideology, the differences explained by different methods of measuring or different time-frames, but they're unanimous in that it's over 2/3 in recent decades.

Dad was detained in a #Texas detention center where @RAICESTEXAS consulted. Dad accepted a deportation to be quickly reunited w/ his infant child. However, the Dad was deported & NOT his child. The now 8-month-old baby has been in ORR custody for 4 months. #EndFamilySeparation

1. At the risk of trying to bring some nuance to Twitter, what follows is a #thread on U.S. law vis-a-vis the war powers, and why the legality of the #SyriaStrikes as a matter of U.S. law (to say nothing of int'l law) is both far from certain and revealing of far deeper problems:

2. Let's start from first principles. For uses of military force to be lawful as a matter of U.S. domestic law, the authority to use such force must stem either from an Act of Congress or from the President's powers under Article II of the Constitution.

3. As the government has already implicitly conceded, no statute authorized these strikes.

Although both the Obama and Trump administrations have relied upon the 2001 Authorization for the Use of Military Force (#AUMF) to use force _in_ Syria, those strikes were against #ISIS.